The present invention relates to a novel press especially for railroad and heavy traction equipment application for mounting gears, wheels, bearings, and the like, onto or demounting the same from an axle.
Presses of the prior art for mounting bearings, wheels, and gears on seats provided for them on an axle or demounting them from said seats have typically employed opposing hydraulic rams which rigidly support ane axle between them. For example, a typical art press employed rigid support of the axle as illustrated in the patent to O. E. Rothfuchs et al, U.S. Pat. No. 2,906,012. Typically, in the prior art, if wheels, bearings and other parts were to be mounted onto an axle, they were mounted one at a time and sequentially in presses of various types employing hydraulic rams but moving the parts from station to station. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,050,837 and 3,189,985, to J. W. Reed et al and Hoffman, respectively, illustrate systems in which each wheel is handled separately in a sequence of steps which may involve movement of the wheel or the axle along an axially oriented production line from one station to another. The movements were regulated by limit switches which sensed the position of the wheel and axle at a series of critical points as each sequential step took place indicating when a part is in a predetermined position so that the next sequential step might take place.
Our prior invention embodied in our U.S. Pat. No. 3,916,499 represented a substantial step forward in hydraulic bearing mounting presses wherein the wheel sets were moved into place and opposing rams drove bearings onto the wheel sets from opposite ends of the shaft at the same time, thus counter balancing the pressures. In this particular system, it was desirable to keep the axle centered. Means was provided to keep causing drive of one ram to stop when the axle was driven off center until the other ram had caught up thereby tending to keep the bearing mounting process in step.